Plunged Into Darkness
by MC The Strange
Summary: A story about two girls from the world where Sam and Dean are characters played on a T.V. show. Thrown haphazardly into this familiar and yet unknown world, will they survive the cruel new challenges in their life? Or will they slowly sink into the depths of oblivion that come with darkness and agony? Rating may change. [If you haven't seen past season 8, there might be spoilers.]
1. Pilot

**First, some words.**  
**This story starts out a little slow. It's all for the character progression, the logic of the situation, and to explain things a little more. This is probably the first story I haven't hit the ground running in. Try to bear with it.**  
**This is kind of experimental, so we'll see where it goes from the first chapter. That means feedback is appreciated.**

**This is one of the many stories the characters Tessa and Jamie have been added into. Some other worlds they have been included in are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, X-Men, and Dragon Age.**

* * *

I stifled a yawn as I checked my phone for the third time in the last five minutes. I knew I didn't have any new messages, but some OCD tendency inside of me felt a kind of relief just making sure. Then again, I could have just been impatient... And eager. It had been at least a year since I'd seen my best friend in person. I often traveled down to Oregon to visit her and family, but this was the first time she was actually coming to see _me,_ in Colorado. Had it not been my 21st birthday, she might not have agreed to come. But after many days of begging, she finally conceeded to be the one to fly over.

I looked down at the car seat my son was laying in. Still buckled up and ready to go, but not uncomfortable, he was fast asleep; the binky he usually sported drooping out of his slack jaw.

I smiled to myself a little before leaning down to gently stroke the side of his face. He blinked a little and waved his head before taking a deep sigh and pulling his aloof binky back into his mouth.

_I'm an angel with a shotgun, fight until the war's won, I don't care if heaven won't take me back..._

I swiped open the call, illuminating Jamie's picture on the screen. "Hey. Where are you?"

"Just landed. I'm coming out of gate... G, it looks like."

I looked around the vast amount of halls the Denver airport had. "Great. There are probably about ten thousand of those."

I could nearly see her looking around, herself. "Okaayy... Hang on. Let me see..." She trailed off. It sounded like she was huffing a bit. I could hear the wheels from her suitcase in the background. "Okay, I'm coming out towards the restaurants."

"Okay. I'll meet you there."

"Okay."

I waited a few seconds. She didn't hang up. I smirked a little to myself, finding great pleasure in the fact she was never the first to end a call with me.

I hung up the phone and grabbed the handle on William's car seat, lugging him with me to the food area.

My high-heeled boots clacked on the stone hard floor of the usually people-filled airport, empty because of the late hour. I stifled another yawn.

I had barely walked into the food section when I saw her, red hair glinting against the bright lights on the ceiling. The grin that came onto my face was impossible to stop and my pace quickened to greet her. We met in the middle and I set William down, hugging her tight.

"Ahh," I sighed happily. "It's great to see you."

I pulled back and smiled into her bright blue eyes. She returned the smile.

"Miss me?" She asked, her wolfish fangs sticking out in her grin.

"Of course!" I replied enthusiastically. "I'd have to, considering the late hour I'm picking you up."

She rolled her eyes playfully. "Oh, whatever. I've seen you stay awake until the sun comes back up."

I opened my mouth to try and say something witty, but she continued, with some concern on her face, "But you do look pretty tired. Do you want me to drive? I got a little bit of sleep on the plane."

I glanced at the circles under her eyes and briefly considered that she might be lying. I knew she didn't sleep much, and I had never seen her comfortable enough on a plane to sleep, even if she did.

"No, it's okay. Besides," I raised my eyebrows and grinned cheekily, "I don't let anyone drive my old man."

She snickered. "Okay, whatever." Her eyes fluttered to William's car seat. "Do you want me to carry him for you?"

I quickly picked him up before she could do it before me. Even though she probably knew I'd reject the offer, she was the type of person that would carry him anyway, just because she wanted to make the load easier on me. "You just got off a plane. I should be the one carrying your heavy items, not the other way around."

I saw her tighten the grasp on her luggage, as if she feared I might try and take it from her. "No, it's okay."

We started walking toward the general direction of the exit.

"So where are you parked?" She asked.

I huffed and shook my head. "Hell if I remember."

/ / / / / /

I set my overnight bag, my purse, William's diaper bag, and his sleeping pillow on the hotel bed and sat down, humming the tune of the exhausted person as my feet felt relief from standing. Jamie came in shortly after, carrying her suitcase and William's car seat.

I unzipped my black boots, freeing my calves from their stronghold against the winter. Even though it was only late October, it had already snowed several times in the past week. It had warmed up the last two days, so I was okay to wear a skirt with black hosiery underneath.

I slipped off my skirt, shorts, and leggings and fell back onto the bed. I could have easily fallen asleep just like that, but I knew I had to get up and get William situated into bed and brush my teeth. I sighed tiredly and sat back up, zipping open my overnight bag and taking out a plain blue tank top and my Superman pajama pants. I snatched my toothbrush bag and walked over to set it in the bathroom before slipping off my Star Wars shirt and putting on my night clothes.

I walked back into the main room and stuffed my discarded clothes back into my overnight bag and then went to unbuckle William. I held him with my right arm while I grabbed his sleeping pillow with the other and set it between my elbow and my hip. I pulled the covers back on the bed I had claimed and set the pillow down, laying william in the middle of the crescent-shaped cushion.

I moved my bags to the foot of the bed on the floor and went to brush my teeth. Jamie joined me not long after, and unsurprisingly, finished brushing her teeth before I did. It took me about twenty minutes to a half an hour to brush my teeth. Call me meticulous, but I liked to actually feel that they were clean.

She was in her own pajamas - a grey tank and Nightmare Before Christmas bottoms - and in bed by the time I came back into the room. I didn't need to look at her screen to know she was scrolling through Tumblr on her phone.

I slipped in between the covers on my bed and turned toward William, cradling him and the pillow in my left arm while my right was tucked under my head.

"Night night." I murmured, already feeling my mind settle into the throes of unconsciousness.

"Night."

/ / / / /

I should have known it was a dream. Everything was in a strange sepia tone. The world had been drained of much color, but at the time, it seemed perfectly normal to me.

I bounced William up and down, grimacing as his crying got louder and more fierce. I whimpered a little and looked down at him worriedly. What could be the problem? He was freshly changed, perfectly fed, he didn't want his binky. Obviously I was holding him, so that wasn't the problem.

He thrashed and kicked in my arms, face red and tears streaming down his tiny face.

I held him closer to me, laying him flat against my chest. "It's okay, baby," I drawled softly, trying to soothe him. "It's okay, I'm right here."

Suddenly, as dreams often do, things took a strange turn, and instead of continuing to try and soothe him, I set him down on the motel bed. He thrashed and kicked and cried harder, desperate to be picked back up.

As if possessed by some unknown drive, I turned away from him and walked through a door that wasn't in the real motel but had somehow been placed in the dream motel. It was a small room with a vase of flowers sitting on a dark circular table. I picked up one of the flowers - white rose, my favorite of all - and put it to my nose. It had no scent. Rather, when I tried to breathe in through my nose, I felt as if my throat were choked. Just as I began to struggle for air, the focus of the dream shifted back to where I had left William. A melody on a music box began to play. I might have found it beautiful in a different scenario, but as the music box played, from the wall came a black shadow with large clawed hands that ran back and forth through the air, suggesting it was intending to grab something. It slowly creeped closer to William, and, realizing that this shadow creature was about to grab him and steal him away, the panic from being unable to breathe and the panic from losing my son to some monster struck so much fear in my heart that I woke up, screaming at the top of my lungs.

The sun streaming through the cheap curtains allowed me to see Jamie jumping up from sleep in alarm at my sudden scream.

I immediately turned to the side, frantic to reassure myself from such a dream and see my son laying next to me.

My throat closed up and every single blood cell in my body dried up in a fiery burst of pain. I doubled over on myself and let out a strangled shriek, all the strength from my body suddenly drained.

Jamie had one leg out of bed, unsure of whether to stay put or come over to me. "What?" She asked, eyes wide and a questioning panic creeping into her voice. "What happened?"

A half-scream, half-sob, ripped itself from my body as I sprang into action, throwing blankets and sheets and pillows everywhere in a useless search.

"_**William**_," I screamed.

Jamie jumped up immediately and came to look at the empty scene. He was gone.

She looked around, eyes wide and panicked. "His diaper bag," She breathed, "It's gone. So is his car seat."

I looked every which way, screaming and trying to breathe in air that wouldn't stay in my shriveling lungs. I ran to the bathroom, searching every corner with my eyes before running back out to the front door.

I doubled over again, pain like I had never known crashing into my chest. "_**Ah**_," I shrieked.

Jamie was on me instantly, helping me to stay on my feet. "Calm down," She tried to soothe. She looked around again.

"The door is locked." She let go of me and pointed. "Look. See?"

I did. The swing bar lock was perfectly shut. Even if someone had picked the lock, they couldn't have opened the door from the outside with the double lock on.

"How, then?" I sobbed, clutching my sides. A sudden burst of panicked hysteria sent me unlocking the door and flying outside screaming.

"Someone," I cried, "Please...! Please help me!" I screamed, stumbling barefoot into the middle of the motel parking lot.

A woman with long blond hair and a backpack slung over her shoulder who had been walking on the sidewalk nearby looked over at me, alarmed at my pleas. She hesitantly took a single step forward before apparently deciding that I really did need help, and breaking into a concerned jog, came over to me.

"Are you okay?" She asked, eyes wide and alarmed.

I looked at her helplessly, tears streaming down my face in an unrelenting stream. "My son," I sobbed. "My son is gone. He was there last night and now-" Another hysterical scream broke my sentence, sending me bending over myself again in pain.

She seemed unsure if she should touch my shoulder or not, nodding and saying, "O- okay, miss, hang on, I'll call 911." And taking out a flip phone from her jean skirt pocket, she did just that.

It felt completely absurd to call the police. What could they do? They were never useful, especially when it came to missing people. I fell to my knees and screamed over and over and over again, the womans voice making no sense underneath my delirious cries.

/ / / / /

When the police got to the motel, the woman who had called them handed me a slip of paper. "That's my number. If you need anything, just call." She said, compassion dripping from her words. "I've got to get back to class, I'm late." And with that, she hurried off.

Through my puffy tear-dripping eyes, I could barely make out the name, 'Jessica Moore'.

Jamie was sitting next to me on the sidewalk in front of our room, rubbing comforting circles on my back.

While the police officer who would be questioning us soon spoke to the motel manager, Jamie took the slip of paper from my hand and murmured quietly, staring at the number, "Did she look a little familiar to you?"

I just sobbed into my hands, unable to think or speak or breathe properly, if at all.

After speaking with the hotel manager, a police officer came to take our statements. How he understood my words through the hysterical sobbing I'll never know.

The police man pulled Jamie to the side, a little away from me, probably so I wouldn't hear their conversation, but I heard what they said anyway.

He spoke in a low voice, "Look, I don't mean to alarm you, but if he was taken yesterday, I'm not sure we'll be able to find him."

Jamie looked at him questioningly, head tilted upward in a position that showed she was ready to recieve more information.

He glanced back at me very quickly and spoke even lower, "Well, today's Halloween. It's not uncommon that..." He paused, wondering if he should continue. Finally he sighed and said, "There are a lot of freaks out there doing satanic rituals and such. If her baby was taken, it wouldn't be out of the question to assume someone took him for their own sick games." He looked at Jamie confidentially, "Personally, I'm not from California, so this place is a lot wilder than where I was previously stationed. We'll be doing all we can, but-"

"Wait," Jamie stopped him. "What are you talking about? California?"

He stood up straighter, giving her a strange look. "Well, yeah." He tilted his head down at her and raised his eyebrows, "We are in Stanford, California."

Her eyebrows crinkled and she looked at him as if he had just grown another head. "What?" The wheels in her head were spinning. "What are you talking about? When we went to bed, we were in Denver, Colorado."

He froze, eyes narrowed. He glanced again back at me, then slowly turned back to Jamie. "We're going to have to take you back to the station for some drug testing."

Jamie's eyebrows rose. "You think we were drugged?" Before he could answer, she said reluctantly, "I guess that does seem like the only possible answer. But why would anyone want to drug us and fly us over to California, of all places?"

He frowned deeply. "That's what we're going to find out."

/ / / / / /

Many hours and needles in the arm later, we were released from the police station and told to go back to the hotel since we didn't have a permanent address. Although we had suggested that we might be safer in the station if someone really had drugged and kidnapped us, all the tests had come back negative for any strange substances, so they didn't have enough proof to keep us overnight and had "no choice but to send us home" until tomorrow. We were told they were going to keep "looking into it" and let us know if they found anything. When asked for a phone number, we discovered our cells were gone. We assumed they were stolen by whoever took William and transported us here.

When we got back to the motel, Jamie said she was going to step out to see if her debit card still worked. Strangely enough, whoever had stolen us away hadn't taken our wallets.

Some short time later, Jamie came back into the room, a new kind of energy in her body visible just from the way she walked through the door.

"Tessa." She said, shaking me from my depressed stupor on the bed I was on. "We need to talk. Now."

I looked up at her. My whole existence, the beautiful light in my life, was gone. Everything good in the world had died. What could possibly matter enough to be so urgent?

I tried to focus on every detail of her to keep my mind away from the hole I was rapidly sinking into.

"Did your card work?" I asked lethargically. Every muscle in my body felt weak and dead. Even using my voice felt like an effort.

"No. It wasn't even in my wallet." She said the words as if it was some giant breakthrough. Suddenly she waved a newpaper that I hadn't noticed was in her hand. "That's the point. Receipts, gamestop cards, everything with a date on it that I've had for less than three years is gone."

I stared at her, completely missing the point of what she just said.

"But look," She opened the Alice in Wonderland wallet I had gotten her on her birthday awhile back, "Pictures I've had for years are still here."

"So our kidnapper didn't want your family photos. So what." I said flatly.

"No, Tessa, look," She pointed at the date on the newspaper.

Friday, October 31st, 2005.

I stared at the print for a good two minutes before something in me shifted just then, as if some kind of alternate reality had come into my own. "That... What is that?" I asked, the stupor from the loss of William intertwining with the new stupor of confusion the date had brought up.

"Yeah. I asked the clerk in the lobby? It's really today's date." She said. She walked over to the window and opened the curtains, pointing outside. "And look. Look at the cars. NONE of them look newer than the kind that were around ten years ago. And didn't you see the clothes people are wearing? We're in the mid 2000's, Tessa. I don't know how we are, but we are."

I stared at her, mouth slightly agape.

She walked back to our bags and opened mine up. She pulled out a shirt with Dean Winchester's face plastered on it, with the caption, "No chick click moments". She held it up for me to look at. "This is still here. This is a mouthpiece to the fact we're from the future, considering Supernatural wasn't popular enough to produce T-shirts until..." She raised an eyebrow, "Well, I guess until Cas came in." She shook her head, "But that's not the point. The point is this shirt doesn't have any semblance or hint of a date on it. It could be from any time, and that's probably why it's still here." She dug through the bag again. "Same with this shirt." She pulled out my Once Upon A Time shirt with captain Hook on it. "Even though this show hasn't been invented yet, there's no date."

She shoved the shirts back into the bag. "So anything that we had that showed the true date on it is gone."

More tears slid down my face at a sudden realization. "William hasn't been born yet." I looked down at the floor. A sob escape from my lips. "I don't even have a picture." My voice cracked at the last word.

She came to kneel in front of me and rested both hands on my knees. "But this is good in a way, isn't it? That means William isn't dead or kidnapped or gone. He's just... Not here yet."

I threw my head back. "This doesn't make any sense. How did we go back in time?"

She stood up. "I don't know." She started pacing around the room, a hand under her chin in a thinking gesture. "But... Do you remember any of your parents' old phone numbers?"

I looked at her with an expression that told her the answer was obvious. "I don't even remember where I lived in 2005, much less do I remember anyone's phone number."

She sighed, frustrated. "Me neither."

Suddenly she stopped pacing, taking something out of her jeans pocket. She looked up at me.

I stood up and walked over to her, looking at what she was holding in her hand. It was the piece of paper with the name and number of the girl who had called the police for us earlier.

I stared at her. "You don't mean-"

"It's the only number we have. I think tomorrow we should call her and ask if we can rent a room or something for awhile. I know in 2005 my parents were still living in Oregon, and it was in the same house they live in now." She made a face, "Or... Then. Er.. Someday? Will live in? I don't know."

"That's great. But Jamie, we don't have money." I reminded her. "With spending this night in the motel on cash only, I've got two dollars and forty-eight cents to my name."

She sighed. "I know. But maybe she'll let us stay there for a little while, just until we get jobs. Then we can save up and head back to Oregon."

I felt completely drained and confused. From the crying, the emotional rollercoaster, and the impossible venture of wrapping my head around time travel, I was exhausted. "What other choice do we have, I guess?" I conceeded.


	2. The Devil's Trap

"You know, I'd forgotten how many more payphones there were ten years ago." I told Jamie, leaning against the call box.

"You're stalling."

I fidgeted with the paper in-between my fingers. "What am I supposed to say? "Hey, remember me? The crazy lady at the hotel the other day. You know, the one who lost their baby. Mind if me and my friend shack up with you for awhile until we get jobs to travel back to our own time?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, whatever." She shrugged, "We can't use money to get back to our time."

I sighed. Eyes focused on the number in my hands, I took a deep breath. "Yolo." I said.

"Which is just another way of saying, "Let's do crazy shit."" Jamie scoffed.

I shook my head, more out of embarrassment and trepidation at the phone call than her comment.

Three rings. And then a, "Hello?"

I almost dropped the paper. I had been expecting her to pick up, but her voice still made me jump. "Uh, hi. Is this..." I squinted at the name, "...Jessica? Jessica Moore?"

Her voice was bubbly and bright. "Sure is. Who's this?"

I glanced at Jamie. "This..." I took another deep breath, shaking my free hand in an attempt to get rid of my nerves. "This is Tessa. I'm the girl from yesterday. At the motel?"

She gasped in recognition. "Oh. Oh my god! Did you find your baby? Is everything okay?"

I groaned a little under my breath. "Uhhh... Not... Not really. See, the day before yesterday, we weren't even in California. We don't know anybody here and..." I groaned louder this time. "Ugh, I know this is horrible, but we don't know anyone, and we don't have any money to leave town or stay in another motel. We were just... Well, we were kind of wondering if we could stay with you for a couple days, or maybe rent a room, just until we can pay you and get back on our feet."

"Umm..." I heard her shuffling the phone around. "Well... My boyfriend is out of town for a couple days, I guess you guys could stay for the weekend. I don't know about after then though."

I stood there in frozen shock, eyes wide and eyebrows narrowed in a completely freaked out and unbelieving expression.

"Hello?"

I blinked twice. "Uh. I. Well. Wow. Wow, that's... That's amazing. Do you have directions to get to your house, or an address maybe?"

Jamie took my words to her as instructions and took a pen from her purse. I took it and wrote down Jessica's address on the small piece of paper her phone number was already on.

After I hung up, me and Jamie promptly went back to our room to pack.

"I can't believe she is actually going to let us stay at her house. I mean, we met her yesterday. Isn't that weird? Just a little?"

Jamie slipped on her black jeans with chains criss-crossed around the back. "Not really, considering the situation. She seems really nice."

I made a face that told her I saw her point. "Well, yeah... But what if we were freaks or something?"

She shrugged. "Then I guess she'd have freaks living in her house for the weekend."

I pulled on my pink tie-dye slitted skirt and a regular pink tank top, pulling on my rainbow beenie. A plus about being in this new twisted reality was that California was much warmer than Colorado.

I picked up my purse and frowned. I looked inside of it, then set my purse down and looked inside of my overnight bag.

"Uhh...Jamie?" I asked.

She had her suitcase handle pulled up and ready to pull behind her. "Hmm?"

"I can't find my keys."

She paused, staring at me with curious eyes before my words dawned on her. "Frickety frack."

I raised an eyebrow and slung my purse and overnight bag on my shoulder, following her out the door.

"Was your car here this morning? I don't remember." She said.

I stared at the empty space my Buick should have been. "You're kidding me."

"I guess we're walking."

I sighed deeply.

We had to ask for directions from several people, but eventually were headed in the right direction.

I felt better this morning than I had yesterday. The whole thing felt surreal, like a dream. Perhaps I was going through shock. But somehow, knowing William wasn't taken from me but rather not yet given to me made me feel a kind of comfort that wasn't there before.

We came to stop in front of a pink-tinted building in the kind of neighborhood that didn't look like it sported necessarily bad people, but not the kind of people I expected to be living in Stanford. Not that I had ever been to Stanford, California, but from what I heard about Stanford's school, I guess I pictured everyone to be rich snobs.

I knocked on the front door. A woman with long blond hair opened the door, wearing a Smurfs shirt with a cut down the middle and pink shorts that showed off her long toned legs. She made an L with her hand and pointed at me with it. "You must be Tessa."

I nodded, trying not to stare at the mole right in the middle of her forehead, now that I was calm enough to notice it.

She waved us over. "Come on in."'

We did.

The condo was complete with a small entrance room with a closet which was attached to a fair sized living room, a tiny kitchen, one bedroom, and a bathroom. She invited us to sit down in the sitting area, which was a used loveseat and two chairs surrounding a small coffee table.

"So... Tell me about yourselves." She said, glancing between the two of us. She looked at me, "I'm so sorry about your son, by the way. Have you found out any information yet?"

I looked down at my hands, fiddling with the strap of my purse. "No." I said quietly. "Just... That he's gone. And probably not coming back for a long time."

She nodded sadly, eyebrows creased in empathy for me. "I'm so sorry." She said again, softly.

I took a deep breath and shook my head as if that would get rid of the horror I felt creeping up into my throat again. "So I'm Tessa," I said, gesturing to myself. "Like you already know..."

Jamie waved a hand. "I'm Jamie. Her best friend, sidekick, secret lover, whatever."

Jessica's eyebrows raised as she looked between the two of us. "Oh. So you guys are...?"

It took a second for me to realize what she was asking. "Huh? Oh! No, she's just joking. I mean, we did date once, but-" Jamie gave me a severe look that told me to shut up, lest I lose my arms and legs to her laser vision. I laughed nervously. "But that's long over." I saw Jamie's face change from warning to an emotion I wondered might be wistfulness. "I got married, got pregnant, and then my husband left. Not such an original story, but it was still a hard one. At the time, anyway."

Jessica's eyebrows raised again. "Oh, wow! I'm so sorry!"

I wondered if she was going to keep saying that. "Ah, don't worry about it. He was a dick anyway. I'm really glad he's gone."

Her expression changed from forming pity to acceptance of the doucheyness of a man she'd never met.

"So... What about you? You said you had a boyfriend. How long have you guys been together?" I changed the subject.

She smiled. "Oh, about a year and a half now. He's really great. Smart, too. He got a 174 on his Lsat's."

I raised my eyebrows and nodded approvingly. Like I actually knew what an Lsat was.

"What's his name?" Jamie asked.

"Sam." She said, smiling proudly.

I pointed at her with an astonished expression. "Wow, no kidding. That's so weird. You know, I actually saw a show where..." I stopped, looking at her face and taking in her whole visage completely for the first time. My eyebrows creased.

_"Did she look a little familiar to you?"_ I heard Jamie say in my mind's memory.

My mouth fell open a little, wonderment taking over my thoughts.

I looked over at Jamie. She stared back at me with a pensive look on her face.

Jessica was looking back and forth between us. "Uhh..." She smiled, a bit of a breathy laugh coming out. "Am I missing something? You guys look like you're having some kind of silent conversation."

I stared back at Jessica, taking her all in. "Oh... No... It's just... We were probably just..."

"Where did you say your boyfriend went off to for the weekend?" Jamie interrupted. Not like my speech was going anywhere fast.

Jessica turned back to Jamie. "Some family problems, I guess. His brother came in in the middle of the night last night and stole him off. I guess their dad went out hunting and hasn't come back in awhile, so they got worried."

Me and Jamie looked at each other again.

I asked the question with my eyes. _Is this possible?_

Jamie stared back with the answer. _Is _any_ of this possible?_

She looked up at both of us as if she were missing some punchline to a joke. "So... Lemonade?"

/ / / / / /

Later, after we had talked some more, me and Jamie were getting our things situated and getting the living room ready for that night, grateful that the loveseat had a pull-out bed. After the bed was ready and our bags were situated, we closed the door to the bathroom and spoke in hushed voices.

"We have to talk about it." I breathed.

"What is there to talk about?" She answered back, just as softly. "This entire thing is nonsense."

I frowned. "You weren't so against all this when it was just time travel. _Now_ it's nonsense? Now that one of our favorite T.V. show's is actually _coming to life?_"

"We don't know that. Not really. It could be some giant coincidence."

I scoffed. "Oh. Yeah. _Right_. You heard her. Sam Winchester. _Winchester._ How common is that name? And it's 2005. _2005!_ What other explanation is there?"

She shook her head, staring off into the bottom corner of the small mirror above the sink. She looked like she was sorting through everything. Finally, she said, "You're right. I don't know how any of this is happening, but it's all happening."

I nodded. It was final. I took a breath and fully accepted what was happening, even if my mind couldn't even begin to wrap around it. "Then you know what the first thing we have to do is." I told her.

She looked up at me, confused. "Find our families? If they even exist here?"

I stared at her as if it were obvious. "No. We have to save Jessica."

She looked at me like I was stupid. Or crazy. Or both. "_What?_ You can't be serious."

I returned her look of stupid and crazy. I couldn't believe what I had just heard. "What are you saying? Of course I'm serious! Do you know how much pain and conflict could be avoided for the boys if Jessica only survived?"

She shook her head. "That's the whole point. Neither of the boys could have grown to be who they are if Jessica hadn't died." She raised her shoulders. "I'm not saying I want some innocent girl to die, but... Maybe it's for the better."

I looked at her incredulously. "You're joking, right? What if the whole show Supernatural was real, and that's why we're here? To save lives? To save people Sam and Dean couldn't?"

She sighed. "I don't think that's what's going on, Tessa."

I threw my hands up in the air. "Well, why not?"

We heard shuffling outside, probably from Sam and Jessica's bedroom.

I lowered my voice again. "Why not? There are countless people we could save if we just put the knowledge we have to good use."

Jamie shook her head. "If we really are here, then it's probably because of some game someone's playing. And as far as we know, only Angels have the kind of power to open the door to our world."

"Archangels, you mean." I corrected. Suddenly a thought struck me and I looked at Jamie sadly. "Look... I know you don't believe in God. But maybe now is a good time to start. I mean, we already know Chuck exists. Maybe God is the one to do all this."

She raised her eyebrows as if she thought that were a stupid idea, then stopped. "Well..." She seemed conflicted. "I don't know, Tessa. I think we should wait until tomorrow, sleep on all this. It's been a long, stressful day, and it's barely even begun. We'll figure out what we're doing tomorrow."

I reluctantly agreed.

"...So, call soon, okay? I love you."

Jessica was sitting in the small dining room when I came out of the bathroom. Thankfully, she didn't question why we had gone in together. I sent a silent thank you to whoever created the cliche that all girls go to the bathroom together.

Jamie came out of the bathroom shortly after. "I'm going to go out for a little while. I'll be back." She said, heading towards the door.

I spun to watch her leave. "Where are you going?" I asked.

"Job hunting." She replied. "I want to get applications in as soon as possible. Who knows how long we'll be here, with the police investigation going on."

Jessica nodded, eyes bright. "I know the supermarket down the road is hiring. You could check there first." A thought occurred to her and she crinkled her brows. "Do you have a ride?"

Jamie shook her head, looking tired with her response. "No. Whoever took our debit cards and our phones also took Tessa's car."

Jessica's eyebrow moved to form a concerned arch. "I could take you if you want. I usually walk everywhere, but I do have a car to take if you would prefer that."

Jamie waved the offer off. "No, it's okay. I can walk."

"Really, it's no trouble." Jessica said.

Jamie again declined. "No, it's okay. You're a college student, you probably could use that gas money for something more important. I need my exercise, anyway."

Jessica eventually conceded to Jamie's will to leave on foot, and after grabbing what she needed, Jamie was off.

I sat down next to Jessica at the small round table. "So... How did you and Sam meet?" I asked.

I already knew the answer. It was the person - or rather, meatsuit - that ended up killing Jessica, but I couldn't remember the man's name. I could see the black-eyed figure in my mind's vision, but I couldn't remember his name.

"We actually met by one of Sam's friend's, he was in the same class as him." She told me.

I nodded. "Really?"

She nodded, as well. "Yeah. His name is Brady."

_Brady. So that's the demon I'll be trying to protect her from._ I thought. My mind started reeling in all the ways you could protect yourself from a demon. There was of course the possession tattoo that the boys (and myself, on my 18th birthday - but with wings protruding underneath the initial sun-flared pentagram) had, but I wasn't protecting her from possession, I was protecting her from death.

The second way I thought of was a demon trap, but there was no way I remembered how to draw it. But with that, a thought struck me.

I stood up and left Jessica in the kitchen, hustling over to my overnight bag. I ran down the list of buttons I had on the strap, from Batman to Disney movies, until finally I came across exactly what I needed.

A button of the devil's trap.

"Oh, thank you, Hot Topic," I murmured, kissing the button.

"Is everything okay?" I heard Jessica call from the kitchen.

I let go of the strap and silently sent a thank-you to God, too. "Yes. I think it will be."

She was giving me a questioning glance as I walked back into the kitchen.

"Is there a library nearby?" I asked.

She gave me a puzzled look, but answered, "Yes. Do you want me to drive you there?"

I smiled. "That would be amazing."

/ / / / /

After Jessica dropped me off at the library, I quickly got to work using one of their computers to search everything I thought would be useful.

Being that saving Jessica was on my mind in the forefront, I searched how to make holy water first. It didn't give me much in the way of useful information, but I did learn a thing or two about Catholic tradition concerning bringing a pure baby into the world.

Next I searched Eric Kripke, Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins. I got some search results for Eric Kripke, but only for the stories he had created that didn't involve anything Supernatural. The actors didn't even exist, and the name Misha Collins had brought up a female porn star.

Searching real life people brought me to a chilling realization.

With trepidation making my hands a bit shaky, I searched the names of my family. My search yielded no useful results, so I tried the old game usernames of my ex step father. At this year, he should still have been married to my mother. I found a couple of websites with the related game tag, but even though it was indeed the same man my mother had been married to for 11 years, there was no information on the pages related to my mother.

I abandoned the search for my parents and instead looked up all recorded births in the city my younger sister was born in. She should have been about one year old at this time. I found a list of births in her hospital, but no babies came up with the name Marietta Rose.

I leaned back in my chair and ran my hands through my hair, scraping the top of my scalp.

What if I had never been born in this reality?

What about my grandmother? My mother? My sister?

My cat?

I felt a deeper depression than before beginning to weigh on me. Everything I had come to love in my existence was gone, save for Jamie.

_Jamie._

I took a shaky breath into my lungs, my whole chest screaming and tearing itself apart at the effort not to completely melt into a hysterical mess.

If I had to lose everything I cared about, I was glad I could keep at least one person from my old life. Although, if I had to be truly honest, I would have taken my baby over my best friend in a second.

I started searching the names of bands, historical figures, actors, and movies that I remembered from my world. From what I could tell, everything was the same, save for the year differences.

What a trip.

Robin Williams, Whitney Houston, and Michael Jackson were all still alive. Taylor Swift hadn't produced a plethora of annoying popular songs on the radio yet. People were still trending the showcased belly button, tops that came up to the bust, and homosexuality was just beginning to peek its head out of the corner. Facebook was just a baby and Twitter hadn't even been invented yet, much less Tumblr.

I sat back in my chair again, completely blown away at the huge differences ten years made.

I checked the time. Jessica had said she would be back to pick me up in an hour and a half. That was only four minutes from now. I logged out of the computer and stood up, gathering my purse and getting ready to leave.

I felt like a big baby, being picked up and dropped off like an elementary student instead of a full grown woman. But my car was gone, and hell if I knew how to make it back to Jessica's house.

As soon as I stepped outside, I saw her car pulling up to the curb. I opened the door and got in, buckling my seat belt and setting my purse by my feet.

"I need to run some errands at the bank. Do you want to stay here until I'm done, or do you want to go back to the house?" She asked politely.

Visions of Brady murdering her in the bank ran through my head, but I quickly shoved them aside. He wasn't going to kill her at the bank. And this might be my only chance to have the house alone enough to set up devils traps.

"Could I go back to your house?" I asked a little shyly. "I feel like..." It didn't take much to open a small leak in the huge flowing Nile that was my aching pain. My voice began to tremble. "I feel like I need to lay down for awhile."

Her brow creased in concern. "Of course."

The drive back was quiet.

That is, until "You and Me" by Lifehouse came on the radio.

I stared at the radio in shock. "Wow! I haven't heard this song in forever!" I exclaimed.

Jessica gave me a strange look. "Really? It's on the radio all the time. It only came out a few months ago."

I looked at her blankly for a few seconds before I remembered exactly where I was. Or rather, when I was. "Oh, yeah. You're right."

As soon as she dropped me off, I went straight back to my button with the Devil's Trap on it. I removed it from my bag strap and got my pink pen out of my purse. I had been thinking all day and even thinking in my dreams about where I would draw the trap.

I always brought nail polish with me, so if the house had a carpet, I could try and draw it underneath with nail polish. But the only carpet in the house was sitting in front of the shower, and I doubted Brady would be going in there.

I glanced at my purse, where I knew the nail polish was.

Then again, it never hurt to be safe.

I grabbed the nail polish from my purse and headed to the bathroom. As carefully as I could, I drew the devil's trap in the best precision I could manage with the polish brush. I thought it looked good enough to hold a demon hostage, so I put the carpet back and headed to the front door.

The pink pen I had was light enough not to be visible unless you were looking, but, testing it on the threshold of the front door, I found that it made clear semi-permanent marks on the ground. I drew a small devil's trap on the threshold, then moved to every visible window and drew another small devil's trap on the bottom of the locks. By the last window, I thought I might have the devil's trap fairly memorized. Probably not enough to do it perfect on my own without the button, but enough to make a close replica. Not that a replica would do much good if it had mistakes.

Right as I put my pen back into my purse and sat down on the bed, Jamie walked in through the front door.

"Any luck on your job hunting?" I asked.

She shrugged and sighed tiredly, sitting down. "I wouldn't know. I didn't actually go searching for jobs."

I turned to look at her. "_What_? Then what were you doing all this time?" I asked.

She flopped down the rest of her body and let out a deep breath. "I was trying to find any information on our families." She looked at me, "And I was checking airfare prices and bus tickets."

I frowned. "You're dead set on getting back to Oregon."

She sat back up, her right hand supporting her frame. "Of course I am. Aren't_ you_ worried about your family?"

Her words forced tears I had been trying to fight into my eyes. "Of course I am. I'm terrified, Jamie."

She closed her mouth and didn't say anything else. But I continued, "My son has completely vanished off the face of this planet, and I can't find any information about Marietta. For all I know she was never born - and neither was I. Only God knows - or maybe it's Chuck, now - where the rest of my family is. Mama," The name I used for my grandmother who raised me until I was four, "might be dead, if she's even existential."

A thought occurred to me - the happiest that had come me to since this whole thing began. "If Mama is alive, though, maybe Papa is still alive, too." Papa, my grandfather, had died close to two years ago. He was the only father figure I had had that was actually a dad to me.

Jamie looked like she had stopped listening and was trailing off into her own thoughts, like she so often did when I was talking to her. "Do you think we might not have even ever existed here?"

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my rapidly spiraling mental health levels. "I don't know."

I frowned all of a sudden. "I went to the library today, but I totally didn't think about searching for myself. I searched for family members and actors and movies and stuff-"

"Movies?" She asked.

I shrugged. "Well, yeah. I wanted to see if thing's were the same here as in our realm."

She hummed her response.

I thought about telling her what else I did while she was gone - the devil's traps, the research on holy water. I decided against it, but did ask her opinion on something I had wondered about. "Do you think writing a devil's trap on the floor will actually trap a demon?

She looked at me as if she were exasperated. "Where did you write it?"

I looked at her as if what she had just said literally smacked me. "Why do you automatically assume I drew it somewhere?"

She frowned at me and looked around, no doubt trying to figure out where I could have put the thing. She looked back to me and frowned in what looked like a bit of sadness. A kind of pity, maybe. "I know you're just trying to do what you think is best. But I don't think we should try to change anything here."

I pretended like I didn't hear her comment. "But theoretically it should work, right?" I asked again.

She heaved a huge and loud overdramatic sigh. "Yes, Tessa, if it's drawn right, it should work."

I nodded approvingly.

While we waited for Jessica to come back, Jamie took out a sketchpad and began drawing, while I took out a notebook from my overnight bag and began to brainstorm ideas on how to make holy water. I suddenly was grateful for my paranoid packing skills and my indecisiveness when it came to what to wear. I had overpacked, not sure what I would want to wear once we left the airport, so instead of having two outfits, I had about three and a half.

I jotted down different churches I had seen on the way back from the library and put a note next to them that said, "Ask about holy water."

I thought about what would happen if we did catch Brady. If we drew another devil's trap above him, we could send him back to hell, granted that Jamie could read the exorcism chant off my back the right way. Along with the anti-possession tattoo with wings attached, the chant for exorcism was printed above it in old script.

I didn't think Jessica would appreciate having nail polish on her ceiling, so I went with drawing it on a piece of blank paper, as, like Jamie, I had also brought my drawing pad.

I didn't know if it could work, but I figured just taping it over his head wouldn't hurt to try.

I leaned a little to the side and pointed to my lower back. "Can you read that?" I asked.

She frowned at me. "I can't speak Latin."

I scowled. "You could at least try."

She rolled her eyes and went back to drawing.

I left early to go check out the churches I had seen, and maybe look for more. Granted, there were only three churches I could make my way back to, and every single one of them thought I was crazy, or at least touched in the head. I was given more than one pamphlet for their church therapy sessions.

I hoped I would be able to find my way back to Jessica's.

I didn't want to chance another way home, but as I was leaving the last church, I realized I couldn't tell which way I had come from. I went left, deciding that way looked the most familiar.

It wasn't.

I walked around aimlessly for who knows how long. I asked several people for directions, thankful I had brought the piece of paper with Jessica's address, but I kept getting lost over and over again.

It was beginning to get dark. Just as I was about to give up asking people and maybe take a bus, I came up to a giant building that looked like it was built years ago, by hands that knew the craft of building better than anyone in our day and age. I looked at the bulletin board that was lit up outside. Stanford Memorial Church.

I walked inside immediately, drawn to it's beauty and grandeur.

The first thing I noticed were the whispers. Inside the building, there were about three or four people whispering. Their voices were low and harmonious, like a kind of music rather than speech. I couldn't make out any of what they said, even trying to listen harder. I didn't see anyone in the church except someone kneeling at the altar in the very front, but the place was huge, and I was sure whispers echoed.

"Excuse me," I said softly. My voice carried down the hallways and through the crevices in the building, with a kind of echo that made the words sound warbled to someone who wasn't used to the sound.

The man kneeling looked up from his prayer and turned to me. I could tell he was the preacher of the establishment. Then again, this was a Catholic church, so maybe they didn't call him a preacher. What were they called, then? The pope?

"Yes, child." The man answered, raising an arm in a welcoming gesture.

I stepped closer. "Uhh... I was wondering... If you could tell me how to get to this address." I handed him the slip of paper once I got to him (it was a long way down the aisle).

He looked at it and handed it back to me, nodding contemplatively, "Yes, one of our volunteers lives near there. Jessica, I believe."

I looked at him strangely. "Jessica? Jessica Moore?" I asked.

He looked in thought. "Yes... Yes, I believe so. Our secretary is still here. I could ask if she could give you a ride home."

I probably should have been afraid of strangers. But I trusted people from the church, and maybe I shouldn't have, but I told him yes.

I sat and waited for twenty minutes while she finished up whatever secretarial duties she still had to do, then we went out to her car, which was parked out front. As soon as I stepped over the threshold of the doors to the church, the whispers stopped. No fading out, no walking away, they just stopped. I thought it was strange, but I continued to the woman's car. She took me back to Jessica's house with no problems.

When I walked into Jessica's condo, it was dark out and probably near bed time. The smell of take-out chinese food wafted immediately into my senses.

I looked over to the kitchen. Low and behold, there were Jamie and Jessica, eating take out.

Jessica smiled as I walked through the door. "We got food. Come eat."

I did.

There wasn't much in the way of dinner conversation, and afterwards we sat and talked for awhile. It wasn't long before we were getting ready for bed.

Like usual, Jamie finished brushing her teeth before me. After I was done, I used the restroom, and then blew my nose. For some reason, brushing my teeth made my nose a bit runny. (I'm sure, just the details you were wondering about.)

But as I was throwing my makeshift toiler-paper tissue away, I noticed the small bathroom window was open.

And the devil's mark I had put on it was gone.


	3. Dear Jessica

**Sorry, some more words here.**  
**I'm going to try and make this as in-character as I can, but I'm seriously afraid of messing up the best characters in existence, so please get right on me if I screw up Sam or Dean or Bobby. Please keep in mind, however, that this is placed in the first season, and they still had a lot of character development to go through at that time.  
Once again, feedback is appreciated. Thank you for the reviews!  
Also: The last chapter was changed. I made a booboo in the plot line. It's been fixed. **

* * *

I gasped.

Was Brady already here?

My eyes narrowed.

No. I had a feeling I knew exactly who did this.

I stuffed my toothbrush, floss, tongue brush, and tooth paste back into the plastic bag I had for it and stormed back out into the living room. Jamie was conveniently asleep, even though I had only been in the bathroom about 15 minutes more than she, and it was early in the night.

"Jamie." I said.

She didn't move.

A rush of anger welled inside me. I don't know where it came from - looking back, probably the pain from the past couple days -, and I tried to stop the leak, but once some of it was released, it had to boil out of me. "_Jamie_," I hissed, shaking her violently.

She reluctantly opened her eyes. "_What?_" She asked, clearly annoyed.

My lip raised in an uncontrollable sign of fury. "You removed them, didn't you?"

She glared right back at me. "And I'll keep doing it, even if you find different places to put them."

I took a deep breath, praying to Jesus to calm my nerves. The anger faded, but left tears of frustration and sadness in their wake. "Why won't you let me save her?" I asked, feeling a rush of helplessness.

She rolled on her back. "Because Sam will never grow up if he stays here." She said heatedly. "He will never go back to hunting, he'll never save other countless people-"

"He'd never meet Ruby if he stays here. He'll never say yes to Lucifer. Never have to lose people over and over again. Don't you see? He could have the life he always wanted. Or he could at least take Jessica and run away somewhere safe."

She gave me a patient but yet resting bitch face. "You really think Sam will want to do that? I doubt Jessica would even believe any of this stuff."

"She's a good person, Jamie." The priest at the Catholic church flashed in my mind. "She volunteers at the Stanford Memorial Catholic church."

She rolled her eyes. "Great, she's a Saint. Does it matter?" She sat up. "Think of Dean. Dean will never get his brother back if Sam runs away with Jessica."

I glanced at Jessica and Sam's bedroom. "Be a little quieter." I said very softly. I turned to her and sat on the part of her side of the bed that her legs weren't consuming. "Dean will lose Sam anyway. Several times, in fact."

That broke the solemnity of the conversation. She started laughing. "You know how many times they're going to die? We can't stop anything even if we wanted to."

I knew continuing to talk about it was pointless. I took my pen and my button and went back to the bathroom to redraw the devil's trap. I walked back out and put my pen away, sending her a clear look of, 'If you touch it I'll kill you.'

That night, as I got into bed beside Jamie, I decided on my own that I would do everything I could to save Jessica. Even if I did the whole thing alone - with Jamie's opposition.

I stared at the ceiling. Every night I prayed to Jesus, but now who was that? We were in an entirely different world. Was Jesus still the same thing here? Had he even existed? At least I knew there was God. Or Chuck, rather.

I thought of how strange it was to put a face to such a powerful entity.

Jesus, God, Chuck. I had a feeling they were all the same. And surely, even here, he was listening to my prayers.

Suddenly a strange thought struck me.

God wasn't the only one who could hear my prayers, now.

I glanced very quickly at Jamie. Her even breathing and closed eyes told me she was probably asleep, and even if not, she was close to it.

I bit my lip. _I feel silly,_ I thought to myself. _But I should still try._

I took a deep breath and let it out slow.

_Dear Castiel. _I began,_ I don't know if you can hear me. I hope you can. It would be really great if you could._ I shook my head, even though there was no one to see it._ I'm rambling. What I want to tell you is, we're from some alternate dimension. A world way different from here. If you're listening, I hope you can see mental images too, because that might help you know that I'm telling the truth._

With all the mental power I could muster, I focused on images I could recall of him and Sam and Dean on my T.V. screen, then thought of the times I had met and taken photos with the actors who played them. I thought of sending those images to Castiel, envisioning Misha Collins' face in my mind, as that was the only face I had known Castiel to own.

_Alright, I don't know if you got any of that, but that's what all this is in our world. A story. And now we're here, and it's real, and my son is gone, _I envisioned William's face._ And I really have no clue what's going on. If you can hear me, I don't expect you to bring your feathery butt down here to help, but if it's possible, could you at least look into all of this? Maybe some other angels know what's going on._

I opened my tightly shut eyes and looked at Jamie again before returning to pray._ If it's possible, could you leave Jamie out of this for now? If this is a chance to save people, then I want to take it. So far, she doesn't seem to be on the same wagon as me. I know you value human life, Castiel, so I hope you understand._

Vaguely I wondered if he did care as much right now as he did in the show. He didn't start understanding the more complex parts of humans until Dean, after all.

I wasn't quite sure how to end the one-sided conversation._ Uhh.. I'm going to bed now. So... Goodnight._

And with that, I fell into a restless sleep, dreaming of nothing but the preparations I was going to take to protect Jessica.

/ / / /

The next morning Jessica was up bright and early in a plain-looking outfit, getting ready to leave. I had slept in my day clothes - comfortable indie-printed leggings and my "I'm Hooked" shirt from Once Upon A Time - so I immediately sat up in bed, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

"Where're you goin'?" I asked, my voice slurring from sleepiness.

She looked over her shoulder. "Oh, I'm going to my church. I volunteer every Sunday."

Sunday.

I jumped out of bed, startling her a bit.

Sam and Dean were coming back tonight.

"Can I go with you?" I asked, less slurred this time.

I was already grabbing socks out of my bag and slipping on my converse before she answered, "Well, I... I guess they could use all the hands they could get. Why not?"

The whole day I kept a sharp eye on her. I watched for any signs of anything dark, anything demon-y, any sign of Brady. But there was nothing, and I even felt very welcomed at the church, carrying boxes for a food run in and out of cars and rooms. The priest seemed pleased to see me back. The only part of the day I didn't like was when I dropped a box on my toe and juices spilled everywhere. That was fun.

By the time we were done doing what they asked us to, it was well near 6 o clock, and the both of us were exhausted. Along with carrying boxes of food, we carried and organized books that had been donated to the church, helped some elderly people arrange their furniture, and had a small devotional, which I was completely lost in. I hadn't picked up a regular bible in years, much less a Catholic one.

Again when I walked into the church I heard whispers. This time it only sounded like two people, though. Like they were having a conversation. They spoke all throughout the devotional, which didn't make sense to me, because the room was shut off from the rest of the church and no one in the group was whispering. I chalked it down to extreme stress and depression.

When we got home the sun was just disappearing behind the building's to the West. Jamie was sitting on the fold-out bed, drawing again. Me and Jessica both sat down tiredly.

She looked over at me and Jamie. "What do you say we order take out again?"

Neither of us argued, even though I secretly thought she would save more money by cooking at home. Then again, maybe she didn't know how. It wasn't uncommon, especially in college students.

Time went quickly. After we ate, we talked some more. All I could think about while Jessica laughed over one of Jamie's jokes was that she was just going to let her die. The more we talked, the more anxious I got. I kept getting up periodically to check the windows, besides the one in Jessica and Sam's room, since it would have been socially unacceptable to go creeping around in their room for no logical reason.

I found Jamie had removed the devil's traps again while we were gone. When I went back out to try and discreetly grab my button and pen, I found the button was gone.

I turned to Jamie and glared. I knew she knew exactly why I was giving her that look.

"Woah, if looks could kill!" Jessica said teasingly.

I looked up at her, my expression softening. "Jamie just took my button." I said honestly. I turned back to Jamie and glared again, demandingly. "She was just giving it back. Weren't you?"

Jamie gave me the best liar face in the world and acted as if she had no clue what I was talking about. "I didn't take your button. It must have fallen off."

I growled under my breath and grabbed my notebook.

While Jamie and Jessica talked about music interests and the latest films, I started drawing out what I could remember of the devil's trap. I took the one that looked the most familiar and was about to go put it back in the bathroom, when Jessica announced that she had to go use it.

I felt hopelessness devour me again.

Even if I did put it back under the window, who was to say it was the right one? And I couldn't very well go back into her bedroom or put another mark on the threshold. I had already been acting strange enough, what with my pacing and anxious fidgeting.

As soon as the bathroom door closed behind Jessica, Jamie looked at me. "Maybe you're right." She said.

I stopped my pacing, which I had picked up again exactly after Jessica left the room. "About what?"

She stared at the drawing book in her lap and began picking the top of it, which was peeling off. "Saving her."

I looked at her, astonished. "What?"

She shrugged defensively, as if I were accusing her of a crime rather than joyous at her change of mind. "I'm starting to like her." She said.

I felt exasperated. It took talking about music interests and movies for her to want to save the life of an innocent? "Then good. Give me my button back and distract her while I go put another devil's trap on her bedroom window. I can't believe how long it took for you to say this. You should have been on the saving people hunting things wagon since day one."

She frowned guiltily. "I was. Just... Not where Jessica was concerned."

I held out my hand impatiently. "Give me my button so I can draw more traps."

Jamie paused, but reluctantly fished it out of her pocket.

"Thank you." I said indignantly.

"Just so you know, I don't think we have time to put more traps up."

I felt a trickle of horror run down my spine. "What do you mean?"

She looked at the clock on the wall behind my head. "Because we're probably all going to go to bed soon. And then who do you think is going to show up?"

I started pacing again, panic starting to work its way into a ball in the back of my mind.

"Then what do we do?" I asked.

She paused again.

Finally, just before I was sure Jessica was going to come out of the bathroom, Jamie said, "I think we should tell her."

My instinct was right. Directly after she said that, Jessica stepped out of the bathroom.

I looked at Jessica's face. I had seen her face all day today, telling me who the various people in her church were, telling me where to put boxes, laughing at one of Jamie's jokes. She had become familiar to me, even if only a little.

Though I had begun to know her, I wondered if she would believe us if we did try to tell her.

I slowly sat down next to Jamie, as if the couch were going to attack me.

"We have something we need to tell you." Jamie said.

Jessica sat down. "Sure. What's up?"

I took a long look at Jamie. It was apparent that even if I didn't feel like telling her was a good idea, she wasn't going to give me a choice in the matter. I felt like my anxiety levels had reached a new high, but I figured if we were going to have any chance at saving her, Jamie was probably right, in the long run.

"This is going to sound crazy." I told her, taking the jump off the cliff called risk. "But please try to believe us."

She looked between the two of us. "O...Kayy... Shoot."

I took a deep breath. If I was going to come out with it, it was all going to come out at once.

"So we're actually from the future, where you and Sam and his brother Dean are all just a T.V. show, and tonight you're about to die, and you need to know this because if you don't we'll have just about no chance of saving you."

Jamie looked at me. "Way to break it in slowly, there."

I shrugged indignantly. What did we have to lose? Literally.

Jessica looked between the two of us, a little freaked out. "Okay, you guys are either officially crazy, or you're under a lot more stress than I first thought. Is this some kind of joke?"

I looked at her, terrified she would reject us, and terrified for her life. "We're telling the truth," I told her helplessly.

"Sam Winchester. He was named after his grandfather, which he's never met. His mother died when he was six months old. His dad is always on hunting trips - but not for deer, for monsters." Jamie said, as if it were the most practical matter in the universe.

Jessica's eyes were wide as she looked at Jamie, then at me, then back again, looking as if we had just grown five heads on our bodies. "I think you two should leave."

I looked out the curtain. "What?" I asked, incredulous. "But it's the middle of the night!"

She looked between us again and shook her head, "I was trying to help you guys, you know, because I thought it was the right thing to do, but-" She put her hands up, "But this? You guys are crazy. Totally."

I stood up. "Please! Please don't make us leave. I'm really afraid for you, Jessica, I-"

"Oh, believe me, I'm beginning to get pretty afraid, too." She interrupted. She stood as well. "I think you two should leave. Get your bags and get out. Now."

"But-"

"Now." She wasn't yelling, but she was stern, and the intensity of her glare made my feet move on their own to pick up my bags and get out. Jamie followed suit.

Outside, the air was a bit frigid. Nothing like Colorado would have been at this time, but cold for California, I supposed.

We didn't leave her street.

I set my bags down next to Jamie, who was sitting on the stairs of Jessica's condo.

"What are we going to do?" I asked, running my hands through my hair, pacing back and forth.

She had her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. "We just have to wait until Sam and Dean get back."

My heart started pounding in my chest as if I were running a marathon.

I hadn't considered "Sam" and "Dean" as Sam and Dean in a few years. I had met their actors at Supernatural Con - including Misha, who was a total wondrous nut like me, in reality. I felt as if I knew them as people, not characters. And now here they were, no acting involved. I didn't know what to think. My mind was a twisted mess, trying to sort out the difference between acting and reality.

"This can't be real. How could anything that's happened within the past 24 hours have happened?" I felt like I was going insane.

My son was gone. Fictional characters were in the bodies of real people - or so that was what everything pointed to.

Maybe we had just made believe everything. Maybe we actually _were_ just kidnapped and transported to Stanford, and maybe we had met a girl named Jessica with a boyfriend named Sam Winchester, and maybe that was just all some big coincidence.

I felt my brain going into maximum overdrive in hysteria and panic. What if it really _was_ all just some big coincidence? What if the people who had kidnapped us had taken William, my car, and anything with a date on it?

The date. My brain couldn't fathom how it was possible.

I squatted down and covered my ears, trying to block out some of my senses. None of them pointed to reality, in any case, so what was the point of using them? They were just making me more confused.

Jamie was by my side instantly. "Tessa. Tessa, it's okay. I don't know how it's possible, but it is."

I wanted to scream. But the only thing that came out was a long hoarse breath. "How?"

She grabbed my shoulders. "Hey. Look at me." I did. I focused on her deep blue eyes as if they were a life line. I felt as if without her as an anchor, I would literally become so light that I floated up into space and died.

"You believe in God, right?" She asked.

My mind twisted into indecipherable places of darkness and happiness all at once. Horrifying things I had seen as an EMT - a newborn splattered on the road, thrown out of a car; a child sitting at his mother's feet in another car, the most horrified look on his face, forever frozen there in his death; a friend shooting herself in the head - beautiful things I had experienced - the first time I saw William: his first smile, his first giggle, his laughs; a little girl who had nothing, running up to give me a piece of candy just because I smiled at her.

Did I believe in God? Did I know Jesus?

I had been to the darkest places of the Earth and survived. I had been to the most beautiful places and been humbled by it. I had gone through pain I would never have made it out of if I hadn't had someone to pray to who helped me through the things I had experienced.

Yes, I believed in Jesus; God. I believed in energy and spirits and creation. I believed life had power. I believed there was a plan for everything, and I knew there were always going to be things I would never understand.

So, retreating from my reverie, I answered her, "Yes. Of course I do."

"And do you believe in miracles?"

I had seen a baby's arm regrow from being severed in Jesus' name. I had seen cancer patients survive under his authority. I had even witnessed my grandmother's leg being healed from a point where it should have been amputated.

"I believe in miracles."

She kept looking me in the eyes, trying to keep me focused on her, even though I never left her gaze. "Then can't you believe that he did this? What if he did this so you could save Jessica? And countless other people? ... What if he did this so you could save the world?"

Looking back, that was a ludicrous idea. But at that time, they were the words I needed to hear.

As my mind began to process her words, and I began to pray, Jamie looked up behind me.

"Maybe I'll meet up with you later, huh?"

"Yeah, okay."

A car door shut and me and Jamie looked up at the intrusion on our conversation.

Any prayers I had formulated and anything else she might have said flew out of my mind.

It didn't take me more than five seconds to recognize him. It was strange, because he didn't look like the person I had come to know as Jared Padalecki, but he looked like the character I had come to know as Young Sam.

Jamie stood up immediately, letting go of me and taking one step closer to the mammoth of a man.

I, on the other hand, fell on my butt. Once Jamie let go of me I lost my balance, and since I was squatting, I fell backwards onto my backside.

"Sam," She said urgently. "Jessica's inside. There's a demon after her, and we don't know if he's gotten to her yet. We were trying to keep an eye on her but she kicked us out."

He paused in his walk, eyes wide, looking between the two of us while the words processed. Something like a panicked disbelief mixed with confusion flashed in his eyes. "Demon? What are you...?"

Jamie glanced at me, eyes also widened a tad. "He doesn't know they exist yet." She said softly, sounding a bit surprised, but in a way like she should have known.

He took a giant step around us and speed-walked into the apartment. Apparently, even though he'd never heard of demons yet, he thought something might be amiss.

Jamie pulled me to my feet and we followed Sam into the apartment, Dean not far behind.

"Jess?" Sam called. No answer. "Jess?" A bit more alarmed this time.

I paused, pulling Jamie back from walking. "Jamie," I said softly.

She turned to me.

"Do you hear that?"

She seemed to stop breathing. I could tell she was listening very hard, but I knew she had hearing problems, due to many ear complications growing up.

"No." She finally said, looking to me for the answer she couldn't sense.

I glanced behind her head toward Sam and Jessica's bedroom. "The shower." I murmured, heart beating a million miles an hour as I pushed past her and flew into the next room.

Sam entered the room right after me, having just gotten done checking the kitchen and main bathroom.

I burst open the private bathroom's door and my heart stopped.

"You." My voice shook.

Sam came up behind me and stopped. His face was incredulous. Confused. Panicked. "Brady?"

"Brady" looked up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh. He puckered his lower lip and shook his head just the slightest bit. "Sam, Sam, Sam." He said, as if he were talking to a young child. "I really wish you hadn't done this. We could have had so much fun together, you and I."

I looked at Sam, then at Jamie, then back at Brady, confused. My eyes trailed to the floor, where he was standing on the bathroom mat right in front of the shower.

"The mat...!" I gasped.

Jamie probed me with her eyes from behind the doorway. "What?"

I turned behind me to look at her. "The mat!" I exclaimed, this time. "I put a trap under the mat when we first got here! I guess it was the only one you didn't find!"

Her eyes went to the mat, as well.

Sam looked between me and Jamie and Brady, confused as all hell. "Wait, trap? What's going on? Where's Jessica?"

I stared up at him, my mind reeling. Every dead body I had ever seen, friend and stranger, on the job and outside of it, flashed through my mind.

Right before I looked behind him, up at the ceiling.

"No." I whispered.

He followed my eyes to where I was looking.

"NO!" He screamed, nearly falling over forward to lean onto the bed, still looking up at her. "Jess! NO!"

Brady looked up at his work from his place on the mat. "Well, that wasn't exactly how I imagined it happening, but your reaction is still satisfying." He sighed sadly and shook his head again. "I'd love to light up the fireworks for you, but I'm a bit intertwined. Mind letting me out?"

Sam looked at Brady, shock and murder and rage and horror and even more shock evident in everything about him. "You did this!?" He gasped.

Brady smiled, kindly, almost. "It was wonderful. How she trusted me. And then how she screamed when I slowly cut her," He shivered in delight, "Inch by inch. So beautiful, her blood..."

Instantaneously I knew, for some reason, that he was baiting him. I had seen the tactic several times with other people, and I knew that was what was happening right then. I turned swiftly to Sam and put both hands on his chest, stopping him from going over to Brady.

"No! Stop! He's baiting you!" Sam tore his eyes off of Brady to look down at me. I saw the world burn in his eyes.

"If you go over to him right now, everything that has happened tonight may be for nothing! Please, please, please, listen to me! I can help you stop him!"

The resistance I felt eased away. I slowly removed my hands, cautious he might try to tackle Brady at any moment.

"We can't kill him. Not in any ways that I know of, in any case."

Sam's eyes flitted between me and Brady, anger and pain and panic swimming in his amber eyes.

"Then how the hell are we supposed to make this son of a bitch pay? Who are you two?" Dean made his appearance, having stood silent for too long.

I put my hands up in a position of peace. "We're hunters, just like your dad. Jessica helped me when I needed it most, and so we were watching out for her." I looked down at the floor, "Until she kicked us out."

Jamie ran out of the room just then. She returned a few seconds later with my button. She held it up so the boys could see. "If we paint this on the wall above him, he will be sent back to hell."

Just that sentence alone made me feel crazy. I stared intently at Sam and Dean to try and make the reality come back. I forced knowledge to come out of my mouth, "Spray paint works too. Do we have anything like that?"

Sam ran his hands over his face and let out a strangled sound. "Jess. We have to help Jess."

I shook him by the shoulders, partly for myself and partly for him. "We won't be able to help her unless we get rid of this guy." I looked at Dean. "You can't read Latin very well, so you're going to have to be the one to catch Jessica when Brady gets his butt kicked."

Dean gave me a squinty-eyed expression. "What?" He held a hand up, "Wait, how do you know I can't read Latin very well?"

I shook my head and waved my hands. "That isn't important right now." I pushed passed them and went to my bag and grabbed my nail polish again, bringing my note pad with me. I took the button from Jamie and handed it and the polish to Sam.

"You're the tallest one here. You need to try and paint this on the ceiling above him. Please try to be as precise as you can. At this point, trying is all we can do." I said.

Sam looked at the button and polish, then back up at me. "And if I do this, Jessica can be saved?"

I looked at him. Should I lie? Say yes? But then if she couldn't be saved, I'd get my butt kicked anyway.

"I don't know." I said, going for honesty. "But the longer we wait, the less chance I think she'll have."

He went into overdrive. With better precision than I'd had with painting on a flat surface NOT on the ceiling, he slathered on the trap quicker than I'd thought possible.

"Okay," I said, pushing Dean (to his extreme displeasure) under Jessica. "If she falls, catch her." I said with my best mom voice.

I speedwalked back to Sam and lifted my shirt, backside to him. "Read this."

He looked ass if he were a tiny bit embarrassed, but pushed past it and squinted at the writing. It took him a second to read it. I almost regretted having it in fancy typing.

"Exor..." Sam licked his lips, looked up at Brady, then continued, "Exorcizamus te, Omnis Immundus Spiritus, Omnis Satanica Potestas,"

Brady screamed in pain. He looked at Sam with a hatred I thought would physically burn into him. "I'll come back!" He yelled. "I'll come back for you! You just wait!"

Sam put a finger on my back and read along with the script. I felt as if my heart should flutter. Like it should skip beats. Maybe start pounding. But there was nothing with his touch. It actually felt like a small child was grabbing onto his mother. I thought of William, how he would grab my hands all the time. I fought back tears.

"Omnis Incursio Infernalis Adversarii, Omnis Congregatio et Secta Diabolica, Ergo Draco Maledicte, Ut Ecclesiam Tuam Secura, Tibi Facias Libertate Servire, Te Rogamus," Sam continued.

Black smoke ran into the trap above Brady.

Finally, Sam concluded the exorcism: "Audi Nos."

I watched the last of the smoke disappear into the ceiling. "And that's how you say, "Adios, bitch"." I said.

A thump, skik, and thunk later, Dean was struggling to put Jessica on the bed.

Sam was by her side instantly.

"Jess!" He cried.

I quickly evaluated her from my spot at the foot of the bed. I thought I knew what could be done, but EMTS are much more of a touchy feely type than bystanders.

"Please," I told Sam. "If you let me closer, I'm an EMT, I can help her."

He looked at me with tears in his eyes. He seemed to contemplate leaving her, but he conceded after a few moments of hesitation.

I looked at Dean, "If you have a pocket knife, I need it."

Dean also hesitated, but fished it out from his pocket and handed it to me.

I wasted no time cutting off her clothes so I could see her wounds better.

Sam didn't like this - most people usually didn't - but didn't say anything, probably because I was doing my job.

Jamie looked away. Not that she was necessarily embarassed, but probably because she was trying to keep Jessica's dignity. For me, it was just another body.

I checked her pulse. There was none, but her body was still warm. She was very fresh - her wounds were still bleeding. I quickly looked around and improvised with what I could. I took the bloody scrap from her night dress and put it over her wound, folded the rest of the cloth over it, then took the pillow next to her and pressed it with just enough pressure. I asked Sam to hold it there for me. He did.

I would have to feel around the incisures in her abdomen later. I immediately began resuscitation. I didn't have an AED, so I did what I could with what I lacked.

She twitched a bit in her chest. The pulse came back, but very faintly.

I was about to assess her Lumbar wounds when she began gurgling. I quickly rolled her over on her side, still with Sam pressing the pillow to her abdomen, and opened her mouth to try and let whatever was in her mouth drip out the side to open her airway.

Technically, I should have been forcing the liquid out of her mouth with my fingers, but I wasn't wearing gloves, and I had touched many things since then.

Tears were running down Sam's cheeks. "Help her!" He cried.

I looked at him and then back to my patient and made the decision to begin cleaning out her mouth without any gloves.

It wasn't much use. She evidently choked on what I assume was her own blood and I had to begin resuscitation again, which didn't work a second time.

I wished I could close the doors between me and everyone else in the room. Normally if you know the person on a call, they prefer you to be anywhere but there, because that just makes it too emotionally involved. I knew at that point that there was nothing I was going to be able to do for Jessica. With a lack of my usual tools to help someone, with no help besides me, and with no ambulance to get her on her way to a real doctor, she was as good as gone.

I had been here before. I knew this meant I was going to have to face grieving people. That alone was always the hardest part, usually, but knowing the person grieving is worse.

I looked at Sam with impending sadness. He shook his head at me. "No," He said, in disbelief. "No, no, she can't be gone... No, you..."

I got up to leave my spot so he could take it. He clung onto her lifeless body and sobbed disbelief. He looked up at me. "You have to do something! You have to be able to help her!"

I felt strangely disattached to the situation, as if it weren't real. This wasn't actually Sam Winchester. Wasn't even Jared Padalecki. I must have been on a 48 hour run and was hallucinating it all. This was just another patient.

Jamie laid a hand on the tall man's shoulder.

"She's gone, Sam."

/ / / / / /

Some hours later, I was sitting in the back of the impala with Jamie right next to me.

Sam had cried for a few hours and was currently sleeping.

I felt tired enough to sleep through anything, myself, but sleep wouldn't come. I took the time I was awake to write down everything I remembered about the first season of Supernatural, such as things like," If you go to Colorado and find a few backpackers missing, it's a Wendigo - bring fire."

Jamie was staring out the window, watching the world fly by.

We were headed to Oregon. Being the nice guys they were, Dean and Sam weren't going to leave us in a crime scene, but they weren't going to take us on an all-expense-paid hunting vacation, either. We told them we had family in Oregon and that was enough for them. Whether or not we really did have family there was a matter for discussion, but we didn't have any other ideas, and it was probably better than staying in California.

I fell asleep somewhere between Redding and Klamath Falls and woke up again at some unnamed gas station. Dean was getting out to change spots with Sam, who looked like he had woken up only to be thrown into a real-life nightmare.

I stayed awake for twenty minutes or so and watched from my seat in the back as tears fell from Sam's face again while he drove.

I felt like I should do something. Pat his shoulder. Tell him he was going to be okay. Give my condolences.

But I was probably the last person he wanted to talk to right at that moment.

I woke up again when we got to La Pine. Three more hours and we would be in Christmas Valley: the area I thought my grandmother would be.

Sam and Dean had decided to drop us off there instead of where we thought Jamie's family might be, since they were further. They still had to go back for Jessica's funeral, after all.

The only reason they weren't going to be the ones to bury her was for the simple fact that they would be considered her murderers.

I fell asleep again on the way to Christmas Valley and woke up when we got there. We stopped at the only gas station in the tiny town and pumped gas. I went inside to use the last of my small savings to buy a pepperoni stick, as per tradition from my grandpa who was like my father, and asked the person behind the counter if they could give me directions to Rohnda's house. Everyone knew everyone, so the person of course knew who I was talking about. I got her directions in case mama (my grandmother) had moved.

That looked to be the case, too, when we finally got to our old house. It seemed abandoned for a few years. The boys conceded to take us to Rohnda's house and dropped us off.

"Could we get your number? Just in case you need us or something? We hunters got to stick together, you know?" I said as they were getting ready to leave.

Dean's eyebrows raised. "In case _we_ need _you_?" He huffed a short humorless laugh. "No offense, but I think we can handle ourselves."

I shrugged. "I know, but just in case."

I suddenly remembered the paper of tips I had written up for them. I jumped up, "Oh!" I opened my bag and ripped the paper out of my notebook. "Here." I handed Sam the paper.

He squinted at it. "What's this?"

I shrugged again. "Just some tips you might find useful. There's more people out there like you than you know."

He gave me a meaningful look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

I took out my notebook again and handed him a pencil. "It means give us your number and we'll call."

He looked at Dean and they shared some secret language. I was sure they weren't going to give us a number, so I said, "Please. If only for Jessica."

He looked conflicted. I saw Dean minutely shake his head 'no', but that must have been the opposite push for Sam, because he wrote a number in my notebook.

"Thank you." I said. I looked up at him. "Believe it or not, she was our friend, too."

He smiled very shortly, without humor or happiness.

We watched the impala drive away, the only sign they were there being the dust still floating in the air. I felt a sense of loss.

We walked up to the door and knocked. Lo and behold, Rohnda opened the door. She looked confused. First bad sign: she didn't recognize me.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

Rohnda was a family friend of my grandmother. If anyone knew where mama was, Rohnda would know.

"Hi." I smiled. "We're friends of Karen Bowser. We haven't seen her in a few years, and her house looks abandoned. We were just wondering if you knew what happened to her. We know you guys are friends."

Rohnda looked at the two of us and then sighed sadly. "You two better come in. We'll sit you down and I'll tell you what happened."

We did. We came in and sat down on her couch.

Geez, memories. I used to spend hours being babysat here.

Rohnda sat down across from us in an arm chair. "Can I get you anything?" She asked.

Jamie waved her off with a 'no thank you', but I suddenly realized how long it had been since I had had anything to drink. "Could I have a water, please?"

She nodded and went to go get said water.

I felt more anxiety beginning to form in the back of my mind. I knew something bad was happening. Mama wasn't at her house. Rohnda seemed sad to tell us anything. Whatever had happened, it was bad.

Rohnda came back and handed me my water. I sipped on it. It quenched my thirst and helped to calm my stomach.

"Well," Rohnda said, "There's no easy way to put it. Were you around for Jonathon?" She asked.

I nodded. Jonathon was a brother I had never met. He died of SIDS at 3 months, about 2 years before I was born. "Yes. That was horrible."

She nodded as well. "It was. Well, a couple years later, Jennifer had another baby. She died when she was four. Got locked in a refrigerator."

My mouth dropped a little. I remembered getting locked in a refrigerator, but I didn't die. Mama found me before I ran out of air. "What? What was her name?"

"Tessa." She said.

I felt very strange. Technically, I was dead. How was a person supposed to take that?

"Well... Ron just couldn't handle another death. Especially his little Tessa. She was his entire world." Rohnda continued. "He committed suicide. Just went right outside and shot himself."

I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Papa was not only dead, but he had committed suicide. I felt as if I would die. I tried not to hyperventilate.

I took deep slow breaths. "And Karen?" I took care to use her first name and not the name Mama.

Rohnda shook her head, tears in her eyes. "She just couldn't take so much death in so little time. It wasn't long and she just... Laid down and passed away."

That I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't imagine a world without mama.

I bent over and took more deep breaths. I couldn't stop the tears that rolled down.

"I'm sorry, honey. Were you close to her?" She asked.

I nodded and managed to squeal out, "Like a daughter."

"What happened to Jennifer?" Jamie asked, rubbing my back.

Rohnda shook her head. "I"m not quite sure. Last I heard she was with a man named Vernon, but I heard he murdered one of his wives. Don't know if she's still alive, even."

I gasped for air, trying to brace myself enough to ask, "Can you take us back to Bend?"

Rohnda stood up. "You guys didn't bring a car? But I was actually about to get ready to go to Bend. I can take you two with me."

Jamie grabbed my bags and helped me up. "That would be great. Thank you so much."

/ / / / /

When we got to Bend, Rohnda dropped us off at a grocery outlet. I watched the town as we drove, awe taking place as I saw how much Bend had changed in 10 years. I briefly wondered what Portland was like.

I was very thankful she had even taken us this far. We didn't ask for anything else, so we ended up walking and hitchhiking, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. We rode with a family of eight, in the back of their van with some luggage; a couple of newlyweds; more than a couple of truckers, who weren't as creepy as I thought they might be, courtesy of my trucker uncle with his horror stories about his colleagues.

We did finally make it to where Jamie's family was last seen - all the way to the northeastern corner of Oregon.

We had to walk most of the way once we got to town, which I complained greatly about.

"My legs weren't made for this much walking!"

"Come on. We're almost there."

Complaining was a way for me to keep my mind on anything but my family.

As we were walking up to what I knew to be her grandparents house, I saw her grandmother walk out the door with her purse over her shoulder.

"She's alive," I murmured, a bit surprised. I was glad for Jamie and yet felt a huge empty jealous feeling, as well.

We both stopped dead in our tracks as we saw the next person come out. I stared at the girl and then came up to look at Jamie.

Besides the lack of red hair, the girl was the exact spitting image of Jamie at nine years old.

"Julianna!" Jamie's grandma yelled. "Hurry up! Get your butt in the car."

The little girl, clad in a pink dress and bows in her hair, scurried to the car her grandmother was already getting into. "Yes, grandma."

Jamie turned around and began walking back. I stared at her family and the little Jamie getting into her grandma's car before running to catch up with original Jamie.

"Was that...?!" I asked, awed.

Jamie stared straight ahead. "Must have been." She said.

We didn't say much after that. We walked all the way into town, and I mused over what had just happened.

Jamie had a twin named Julianna, but she died before she was born. Whatever this universe had decided, it seemed as if Jamie were the one to die this time around.

When we got to the outskirts of town I asked, "Why didn't you go talk to them?"

She didn't look at me. "And say what? They looked happy enough. We don't need to put them in any danger by crossing some sort of interdimensional line."

I frowned but didn't say anything until we got into town. Then I asked, "Where are we even going?"

She sighed and immediately dropped her bags and sat down on the sidewalk. She put her face into her hands and sighed again. "I don't know, Tessa."

I sat down next to her, moaning in relief as my legs cried out for mercy to the gods of travel.

I tried to think of what to do. Even if we went looking for the boys, they didn't know much in the way of hunting right now. I doubted they would be able to help us figure out how we got here. The only other person that I could think of that could help us was Bobby. But he was so far away...

"So." I said.

Jamie looked up at me.

"Have you ever hopped a train before?"


	4. I ended up being one of THOSE people D:

**Sssssssoooooooooo...**

**I have a confession to make, and I'm certain I'll get hatemail for it sometime.**

**I don't think I'll be continuing this. Like, probably ever.**

**For two good reasons.**

**1\. I met the cast of Supernatural and had a good talk with Jared, Jensen, Misha, and Mark, and I can't even watch the show anymore because of it. It is literally impossible for me to watch them on T.V. and see them as anything more than actors. They're just people that I've met now. I can't see them as characters anymore, and it's kind of awkward to write a story about people you can't see in that light. Like some kind of creepy person who goes to the same school as their crush and writes fanfiction about them. Yuck.  
I'm not saying that to degrade anyone else who stills writes fanfiction about it. You go, fanfiction people! You're the best! You make the fandoms heart happy.  
But as for me, I can't do it anymore. For me, it is extremely awkward to have met these people and yet continue to write about them or watch their show, knowing they're probably touching someone's balls with their foot while they're pretending to be Castiel or Dean or Sam.**

**2\. The sidekick in this story, Jamie, was actually my best friend in real life for almost 10 years. Last year, we cut ties and no longer talk. I could easily continue this story with her in it, because I know her so well and have written fanfiction before with her in it (under her request though, she always wanted me to write stories with her in it), but like I said, this one in particular will probably not be continued. Sorry.**

** So...Again...Uh...sorry. :/**

**Here's everything I had written before I met them, minus the last two sentences. Sorry o_o**

* * *

"_Hey you_," I sang to Jamie, the wind blowing past us from the open door on the train cart we were in drowning my voice a bit. "_Don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let me into your heart, then you can start, to make it better._"

She gave me a look of mild annoyance from across our living area. "You've been singing different renditions of_ Hey Jude_ for four hours straight. I think I understand the message, already."

I stuck out a pouty lip to her. "It makes me feel better. It's a very encouraging song. With all that's happened," I immediately pushed the thoughts of William and my family away, "It's my only lifeline to sanity. It's my go-to for depression." I shrugged. "Besides, I've had it stuck in my head all day. Probably because of everything's that's going on."

She lifted her hands as if to give up. "I know, I know."

My eyes lit up. "I could sing something better."

"Oh god no. What are you-"

"EVERYBODY'S GOT A WATER BUFFALO, YOUR'S IS FAT AND MINE IS SLOW..."

"DEAR GOD MAKE IT STOP!"

We were interrupted with the train slowing to a near halt.

"Hey, I think we're here." I said.

She gave me a look that implied I was great at stating the obvious.

"Think the train guy will be mad at us for hitching a ride?" I asked.

She stood up, grabbing her suitcase by the handle. "I guess we'll never know. Once it slows down enough, we're jumping."

I stared outside and watched the world swirl by. I hated jumping. We'd been doing it all evening, since we left Oregon. That was hours ago. Who knew what time it was now, especially considering the hour differences the change in states made.

We had slept for a few hours off and on in turns, to make sure the train didn't go anywhere off-track (is that a pun?). The sun was just beginning to peak now.

"I'm starving." I stated, probably for the fiftieth time.

She groaned. "I know. You've told me."

I threw my head back. "No, I'm dying."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, it was nice talking to you, Dying, but I've got to go." And with that she threw her suitcase out and jumped not long after.

I knew I'd better follow her immediately. I had learned that the hard way by waiting for the train to slow down some more and I ended up jumping in a patch of rocks. My arm and side were skinned pretty good.

Thankfully this place had a patch of big, fat, fluffy, comfortable grass.

I was glad I didn't have anything breakable in my purse or bags.

I brushed myself off and picked up my things, walking over to my sole companion.

"So where now?" I asked.

She pointed ahead. "We follow that road and make our way to Sioux Falls. That's our only hope."

We again planned to hitchhike. I knew for sure that we were both dehydrated, and the last time we had eaten was probably about two days ago at Jessica's house.

So when we heard a car coming up from behind us, we both stuck our thumbs out without really looking at the car.

"You girls need a ride?" A familiar feminine voice asked.

We both looked up. My mouth opened in surprise. "Jody?!" I exclaimed.

She looked ten years younger, like she should be on reruns of The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, instead of sitting in a sheriff's car right in front of me, but it was definitely Jody. She gave me a strange look. "Do I know you?"

My mouth remained opened, shock paralyzing my tongue.

"We've heard all about you from our friend. You wouldn't happen to be able to give us a ride to Bobby Singer's house, would you?" Jamie smoothly lied over my floundering emotions.

She gave us a look of confusion and borderline suspicion. "Bobby?" Her eyebrows flew up, "...Singer? The drunk?"

I looked over at Jamie for the answer.

_That's right. I forgot he's a drunk in his town_. I thought.

"That'd be the one." Jamie said.

Jody gave us a strange look. "I'm not so sure you two girls should be hanging around someone like Bobby. But if you want, I'll take you."

We both thanked her and got in the back. It wasn't the most comfortable thing, being caged in, but I trusted Jody not to leave us there.

"Thanks. He's a family friend. Kind of like an uncle." I said, "Or a grandpa." I added.

She started the car forward again and glanced at me in the mirror. "Oh really? How do you know him?"

Why did I open my fat mouth?

I wasn't the best at lying, but I covered, using the first thing that came to mind. "John. John Winchester."

She nodded, puckering her lips in a confirmation expression. "Oh."

Like she knew who John Winchester was. Really.

"So what brings you girls to town?"

Jamie shrugged. "Just passing through. Thought we'd visit Bobby since we're close."

Jody raised an eyebrow. "You girls travel often on foot?"

I gave her a sheepish look. "We hitchhike a lot."

"Oh."

It was about a 20 minute ride to town, and not much longer to Bobby's. When we pulled up, a barking dog greeted us. Jody got out of the car to let us out of the back. She got back in the car and rolled her window down.

"Thank you so much for the ride." I said.

She tapped the top of the window. "No problem. You girls be careful, alright? And if you need anything while you're in town," She pulled out a card from the visor on her side and handed it to us, pointing at her name on it. "Just call this number and I'll help you if I can."

I once again thanked her.

After she drove off, Jamie had to drag me to the door, because even though the dog was barking like mad, it was still my natural instinct to want to go up and pet it.

"I forgot he had a dog," I said to Jamie quietly. "But I remember him now that I've seen him. I remember I sent you a text one time, "Supernatural seasons go on, but does anyone remember Rumsfeld? No. No one." Good boy."

Once we got to his doorstep, Bobby was already at the door, probably having heard his dog.

"Can I help you two with somethin'?" He asked.

I had the biggest grin on my face, unable to control my expression at seeing him. It was strange - I recognized him, felt like I knew him even, but this was the first time I was meeting him in the flesh, and it wasn't his actor, but actually Bobby Singer.

Jamie stepped up to the plate in my absence, unsurprisingly. "We need your help."

/ / / / /

Bobby brought a beer back and popped the top off, setting the cap on the kitchen counter and walking back in to where we were sitting on his couch.

"So let me get this straight," He said, pointing a finger at us with the hand holding a beer, squinting at the thought of what he was about to say, "You two want me to believe that you're from some "other world" where this is all just some T.V. show?"

Jamie gave him a sincere look. "I know it sounds crazy. But it's true."

I tried my damnedest not to start crying again. "Imagine how we feel. Especially me, I mean, I woke up and my son was gone."

He looked at us and frowned, letting out a breath of air that distinctly sounded like a nonverbal way to say, "Well, hell."

He seemed to be thinking of many things at that moment, his eyes searching a place far behind us, before finally they landed back on me and he said, quite frustratedly, "Balls."

Jamie leaned forward. "Ask us anything. Ask us about Sam or Dean or John or Mary. We know about them because they were all on a show we watched growing up. We knew where you lived because of it."

Bobby frowned deeply at her comment. "There aren't more of you, are there?"

We both looked at each other. "As far as we know, we're the only ones to cross over from our world."

He seemed to wonder about that, but continued, "So, what, our lives are the Little House On The Prairie of your world?"

I had to smile just a little at that. "Not exactly."

Jamie looked him in the eye, ignoring everything that was just said. "So do you know anything about this? Can you help us?"

He stared at her and then let out a long sigh. "So you know a thing or two about hunting, then?" He asked.

I almost scoffed, but caught myself to make sure I didn't sound rude. "Of course we do. Salt and burn. Chop heads off. Trap and exorcise."

I was about to mention Jessica, but decided against it.

"Well, I was just about to go on a hunt. Probably some... vengeful spirit." He kind of shrugged, "But I guess it can wait. It's not an emergency or anything, just spooking a few people in the next town over. If you two want to help me, we can start hitting the books now."

I looked over at Jamie. "I'm down if you're down."

She of course agreed.

He looked at us both. "Great."

Right before he dumped his beer on the two of us.

I recoiled and gasped at the sudden shock of being showered. "Ah! Cold! What the hell?!"

"Well. I guess you two aren't demons."

/ / / / /

Studying actually isn't as fun as you might think.

I thought we were going to crack open some of Bobby's books and unleash the secrets to the universe - not so.

It was a little boring, really. I had to focus a lot to try and decipher the story behind the monotonous words. But once I finally focused enough and divulged into the sentences, I was able to be of some help in the study group.

The first couple of days were rough. We were under constant scrutiny. We slept in a guest room together with Rumsfeld, who apparently knew a trick called "Watch.", which involved deep growling any time we moved out of bed.

The first night, as I lay down again to thank God for blessings and strength for the future like I always did, I thought I might try again at reaching out to Castiel.

_Dear Castiel. I still don't know if you can hear me. I don't even know if you listen to humans other than Dean. And maybe you don't even listen to him right now. But, uh.. We're no closer to figuring out how this happened, and there's no sign of our families. I don't know if you care at all, but I'll try and think really hard about what they look like and what their names are so you know what I'm talking about._

I envisioned my little sister, my grandmother, my mother, even their husbands and ex husbands. I ended up going on into a litany of my family - uncles, aunts, my niece, grandparents, brothers and sisters that I never talked to. I wondered if he got any of what I prayed.

_I feel kind of silly praying to an angel. I pray to your father and my father all the time, but I've never prayed to angels before._

_I came here with my friend Jamie. I don't know how, but I did. She's here with me and she's sad about all this too, but I'm the one who lost my son. I know my losses probably aren't worse than hers in her opinion, but I feel like I have lost everything._

I felt as if the room got darker just then, as if the night were trying to consume me.

I took in a very slow, very long breath.

_Good night, Castiel._

_/ / / /_

The life of Bobby was a bit hectic. Any time he had to go somewhere, he'd put Rumsfeld on duty and lock us in the bedroom (which he apologized for and said, "Just to be safe, I'm sure you understand. Can never be too sure.") with some books and water.

He wasn't too shabby of a cook, but he did make eggs and bacon quite a bit. Probably too much.

By the fourth day of our stay at his house, we were allowed to stay on the couch in the living room if he had to go somewhere. Rumsfeld was, of course, our guard for the evening, but even he was beginning to settle down a bit. He didn't seem as wary and didn't growl as much when we changed our sitting positions.

The end of the first week signified my first run of accomplishments. Firstly, I was able to pet Rumsfeld. I gave him a quick rub down on the cranium and he let me, albeit he looked very suspicious about it. Second, I found Bobby's keys, which he had misplaced temporarily. And third, I found a short paragraph about something I thought sounded useful to our situation.

"Jamie, check this out." I said, being as she was the closest one to me.

She leaned over and looked at where my finger was pointing at a paragraph.

"You finally find something? I'm beginnin' to think this search is a dead-end." Bobby said, coming over to look at what I'd found. "Summoning an angel? You think angels did this?" Bobby asked.

I looked up at him. "It seems like the only explanation. In our world, there was an episode where Sam and Dean ended up in our dimension, where they're just actors. An archangel did it. Who's to say one didn't do this to us?"

Bobby frowned. "Okay, say we could summon an archangel," He gave us a look, "And that's believing that they exist." He looked around and lifted his arms, "How the hell do you expect us to figure out which one did it?"

I looked over at Jamie, then looked back at him. "Well... I know one time the boys summoned an angel called Balthazar. I don't remember if he was an archangel though, probably not, since him and Cas served together."

Jamie shook her head. "No, Balthazar was just a regular angel."

I thought I heard Balthazar himself, somewhere in the distance, crying out indignantly at being called "normal".

Bobby squinted at us, which was a look we were becoming accustomed to, as he so often got confused and frustrated when we spoke about things he hadn't experienced yet. "Cas? Who's that?"

I felt some kind of wound stab me at his words, like he had developed amnesia and forgotten a best friend. "Cas is an angel. He's really great. I hope you meet him someday."

That's all I could do, right? Hope? Who knew how things would change since we were here. I was sure just our presence alone must have shifted something by now.

"Huh." He grunted, looking back at the paragraph I'd found. "Well, most of this stuff looks pretty easy to get. It's the angel-specific enochian that'll be hard."

I stared up at him. "What do you mean?"

He pointed at the paper. "Look for yourself. Each angel has a specific enochian sign -we'd have to track down the angel, get the ingredients, figure out a summoning ritual, and get their signal in enochian."

I leaned back and sighed very deeply. "This just gets better and better. Any ideas?"

He raised his eyebrows and shook his head a little. "Only thing to do is hit the books some more. But at least now we have a direction."

/ / / / /

Another week passed and nothing much happened. We didn't find anything else about angels or who might have brought us here, and we couldn't figure out how to bring down an angel lackey to give us direction.

I prayed devotedly to Castiel every night. Sometimes I asked secrets to the universe, or things about God. Sometimes I talked about my day. Sometimes I begged him to help us. Sometimes I confided how much I actually did hurt inside, the pain I felt at the loss of William, my sister, and my grandmother. And sometimes, on a couple nights when it was really very quiet, I thought I heard him answer.

Rumsfeld was committed to making sure we never left the couch, but one day, when I had to use the bathroom so bad I was going to end up peeing on the floor, I finally stood up and went, telling Rumsfeld, "Oh, calm down, you brute! I'll pee on YOU if you don't leave me alone!"

Rumsfeld didn't attack me when I left, thank God. But him letting me leave gave me a whole new insight.

We had been staying with Bobby for nearly a month now. Finally, when we were sitting down and eating our normal luxurious eggs and bacon, I put my fork down and looked at the old salvage yard owner. "Bobby, we've passed your tests. Holy water is nothing but refreshing. We bleed red. There's no allergy to silver." I raised my lip, "No fangs."

He gave me a look as if to say, 'where are you going with this?'

I leaned forward. "So for the love of all that is holy in this world, Bobby. Please," I pleaded, looking him straight in the eyes.

"Let me do the grocery shopping."

He seemed surprised my sentence had taken that direction. I have no clue what he thought I might be asking. Permission to enter his bedroom?

"I'm really not that bad of a cook. Jamie here burns everything except french toast," I shrugged, with Jamie giving an indignant "Hey!". I ignored her. "But I'm a pretty good cook. And I think it would help free up some of your day. I know you're busy a lot, helping people all the time. It's a wonder you even have time to watch _Tori and Dean_. But if you give me a chance, I think you'll find I'm a pretty good homemaker."

He looked between the two of us. "Well..." He looked down at his eggs and bacon. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to eat somethin' new."

I nearly jumped up and down in excitement. "Excellent! I'll be sure to follow any budget you give me, but it shouldn't be too hard to follow, considering all the money you probably spend on bacon every month."

He grunted his response, eating more mouthfuls of his meal.

The next day, he gave me some money, and I went out shopping. I asked Jamie if she wanted to go, but she declined, saying she would be of more use hanging out with Rumsfeld and studying. I shrugged and went on my merry way, using the fake ID Bobby had made me and Jamie, considering our old ones had had dates on them and disappeared. I wanted to be named Barbara Streisand, but he declined my advances and instead gave me a typical Jane Doe.

He gave me quite a bit of money, and even though it was enough for probably the whole month, I made sure to get precisely what I wanted and saved the rest. I made sure to get some things for pie - I made the most killer peach pie in the world.

_I had forgotten how much cheaper food was ten years ago. This is nice._ I thought.

When I got home, I called out to let Jamie know I was back, then went straight to the kitchen. Rumsfeld followed me diligently, after I let him loose from the chain out front, and I slipped him a piece of leftover bacon in secret. I'd never tell Bobby, since he seemed like he didn't really want to get attached to Rumsfeld and so he never gave him special privileges (like sleeping on the bed or eating human food), but I gave Rummy (as I began to call him) food all the time. He loved it.

I got out all my ingredients and found all the cooking utensils I'd need (along with some very weird places he had put guns and ammo) and made quick work of the pie crust and filling. I put it all together and preheated the oven while I made little turnovers from the leftover filling.

Once the pie was in I made a marinade for some steaks I had bought and set them in the fridge to soak. I looked at the fridge in shame, clicking my tongue at how empty of nutrition it was.

I made a salad from three different types of kale, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, snow peas, cilantro, and just a little bit of bell peppers, since I knew Jamie didn't like them. I cleaned off the cutting board and cooked some potatoes and seasoned ribs, making an olive oil salad dressing while the potatoes softened.

By the time the mashed potatoes were ready to eat, the pie was done, and I was finishing up some gravy from the rib drippings. My stomach growled at the smell of the food.

It was great to be able to cook. It felt nice. Normal. Like maybe I was just visiting a family member and William was out in the living room being held by someone, laughing and being bounced up and down.

I starting setting the food on the table and getting plates and silverware ready when I heard the door open and shut. Rumsfeld started barking like mad, suddenly aware he had been slacking off on guard duty by the distraction of a meal.

"Quiet!" I heard Bobby yell. Softer this time, he cried, "Girls, we've got -" His footsteps paused, along with two other pairs. "What the _hell_?"

I looked up as he walked into the kitchen. I was just setting down the pie on a mat, and I'm sure I looked like the cliche version of what every housewife should be: oven-mitt wearing, flowery-dress clad, hair pinned up, and wrapped in an apron.

I smiled as he walked in. "Welcome back. I hope you like dinner." Truly, I did. I knew I was a great cook, but I was really self-conscious about it.

That was when Dean peeked his head out the corner. His eyes locked onto me and it took him a second - I could see the wheels spinning in his head. "Wait, you're-"

Sam walked in just then, and seemed to recognize me immediately. "Tessa?" He asked, shocked.

My smile turned into a face-splitting grin. "You guys!" I walked a few steps towards them to give them a hug, and my arms were even outstretched, when I realized maybe I shouldn't. Instead, I took my mittens off and set them on the counter.

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked, still smiling.

Sam's eyebrows rose. "We could ask you the same thing."

Dean turned to look at Bobby, a hand raised as if to grasp the situation. "Now, hold on a minute. _These_ are the girls you were talking about? The girls you 'took in'?"

Bobby looked a little dumbfounded. "Well, _yeah_. Why? How do _you two_ know'em?"

My smile cracked and I glanced at Sam very quickly. "I was friend's with Sam's fian- uh, girlfriend." I caught myself, always having thought of Jessica as a fiance rather than a girlfriend.

He looked between us all and raised an eyebrow, staring at the floor and mumbling, "Well, I know you mentioned them, but..."

Just then Jamie walked in through the back door, a bag slung over her shoulder. Upon seeing all of us, she said, quite alarmed at Dean and Sam, "Oh. Hey." She sniffed the air and looked at me. "Smells great. I'll be back, I'm going to go put my stuff away."

Bobby frowned. "Where the hell have _you_ been?"

Jamie gave him a look, "Even_ I_ need sunlight _sometimes_."

Before she left the room to go upstairs, she said, "And Tessa, I think you better look at the food supply. We've got one entire pie and one entire Dean - there won't be enough."

I looked at the table. If we only had one rib each, there should be enough, since I made extra. I didn't know how much Bobby would eat.

"Um..." I said, looking back over at our company. At least the ribs were big.

Dean seemed to ignore the lack of food and stepped up to the table, eyes lit up. "You made pie?_ Now_ you're speaking my language!"

He sat down and rubbed his hands together, probably about to grab something, when I stuck my hands on my hips. "Excuse you. When was the last time you washed your hands?"

He looked up at me, shocked and confused that I'd even suggest such a thing.

"Come on." I waved him up, "I don't want ectoplasma on the table, thank you very much." I said.

I looked over at Sam and Bobby, as if to encourage them to do the same.

Sam stared at me in some kind of frozen look that seemed to say, "In our crazy upsidown lives, here we are like a modern family, being told to wash up for dinner." But it wasn't a bad look. And this time, when he smiled, it was a short and sweet _true_ smile.

Bobby, on the other hand, looked at the pie I made with a kind of sadness I didn't understand.

We all washed up and Jamie came down to eat. Everyone seemed to enjoy it well enough, so I commended myself for a job well done.

Bobby seemed uncomfortable. Like he wasn't sure how to take all of it - the food, the company... the company_ knowing_ the other company.

Dean kept stealing glances between me and Jamie and the pie - lustful at the pie, suspicious to me and Jamie.

Sam seemed tense, like something was bothering him.

Bobby just seemed like he didn't know what to do about the whole situation.

Only Sam, Jamie, and I took some salad, Dean and Bobby completely ignored it.

We ate in silence, for the most part. It wasn't uncomfortable, just... quiet. That is, until we got to dessert.

"This is the best pie I've ever eaten. What did you put in this thing?" Dean murmured over a bite of peaches.

I shrugged. "It's probably the best pie you've ever eaten because it's actually homemade, instead of that crap you guys get on the road."

He stopped chewing and gave me a very serious look. "Don't you ever," He pointed his fork at me and raised his eyebrows, "Dis the pie. That stuff is like a god."

I scoff-laughed. "You wouldn't know what those are even like... Yet."

When we finished eating, Jamie helped me do the dishes and put things away while Sam, Dean, and Bobby went out to converse with each other.

"Did the boys seem kind of tense to you?" I asked quietly.

Jamie shrugged. "They probably just got done with a stressful hunt."

I gave her a once over. There was something off about her. "You know, _you_ look kind of tense, too."

She shrugged again, this time more forcefully. "I'm fine. Seriously."

Just then, a meteor fell from the sky and incinerated us all.

The end.


End file.
